MINING DISASTERS.

Gisborne Times, Volume VII, Issue 353, 1 March 1902, Page 2

MINING DISASTERS.

TERRIFIC EXPLOSIONS. GREAT LOSS OP LIFE. (Per E.M.S. Sierra, at Auckland.) San Francisco, Feb, 9. In an lowa coal mine on January 24, twenty-one men were killed, eight seriously injured, and the coal mine nearly wrecked by an explosion of dust. The force of the explosion was terrific, the shaft belching forth flames and debris like a volcano in eruption. The top works of the mine were thrown 200 feet in the air. The work of the rescuers was delayed by the wrecking of the fans and the hoisting-cages. Even after the fans were started, the mines could not be cleared of the deadly gas, as the explosion had fiercely shut a number of doors.

There were one hundred and ten men in the mine at the time of the disaster, but eighty managed to escape through air shafts.

News of a terrible mine explosion in Mexico came on February 1. The disaster occurred at Hondo mines.

Eighty-five miners were killed outright and seventy-five more were imprisoned. The shaft was closed by earth and stone loosened by the explosion.

The Hondo mines - *’are located at the terminus of the branch of the Mexican International Road, and are important. The means of rescue -were crude, and this largely increased the death list. The means of communication with the locality are uncertain, so only meagre details of the accident are obtainable.